Photo: AFP/Scanpix

Boris Johnson’s family ties with Lithuania
the Lithuania Tribune, DELFI
July 25, 2016

Britain’s new foreign secretary Boris Johnson has ancestral ties with Lithuania. The controversial politician’s great grandfather was a Litvak born in Žemaičių Kalvarija, the famous American palaeographer Elias Avery Lowe (Loew).

Elias was born in Žemaičių Kalvarija in Lithuania in 1879. His family migrated from the Russian Empire to New York when he was 12.

Elias studied at Cornell University, became a US citizen in 1900. In 1902 he went to study in Germany, where in 1908 he defended his doctoral thesis written under the guidance of famous palaeographer Ludwig Traube.

In the US Avery Lowe married Helen Tracy Lowe-Porter, the famous translator of the works of Thomas Mann from German to English. They had a daughter, Frances Beatrice Lowe, who is Johnson’s maternal grandmother.

Frances married James Fawcett and had five children, one of whom is Charlotte Johnson Wahl, a celebrated British artist and Boris’s mother who married Stanley Johnson.

Lithuanian foreign minister Linas Linkevičius said Johnson is aware of his Lithuanian roots.

“I reminded him, he did not deny it and said that he has been to Lithuania, but a long time ago, so I thought there was a need to refresh the impressions. He has kindly agreed to plan a visit. I think that in addition to bilateral relations, we will discuss what we have in common historically,” Linkevičius said after meeting Britain’s new foreign secretary in Brussels last week.

Full article from 2016 behind pay-wall here.